I know I may be late to the news about the new Homefront game (god I don't know why people bother with it but I'll get to that in a minute) having a new "backstory", but with the release of the game today, now's a good time to talk about it.
For those of you who don't know much about the "mythos" of Homefront, I'll give you the skinny: apparently North Korea has the capability to invade the United States in the 2020's after Kim Jong-Il died (which he did actually in the same year the game came out) and having his son take his place (which also happened). That was in 2011 and 5 years later North Korea still would rather saber rattle with its southern neighbor than peace talks and still is a crap hole (and Un is still an a--hole). Well that was what the previous Homefront game had in its backstory, the new game still had the same premise; North Korea somehow being able to invade the USA (and yeah it still sucks but it gets worse). But the twist is that the new game, Homefront Revolution, has an alternate history where North Korea loses the Korean War but somehow is able to exist and transition to a capitalist nation even though it would definitely be annexed under rule of Seoul. Then this Apex Corporation was formed by some guy who had a mixed ancestry consisting of a white father and a Korean mother and his son took over when he died and then made a bunch of advanced tech and stuff. And then acts like sort of a bank to the US and then when the US couldn't repay its debts, they go off and occupy the country.
And if you ask me about what I think of this, it's s--t, perhaps even more than the original Homefront's backstory. Now while I'll give praise to a "realistic" way of taking over the US via initially bloodless occupation accompanied with humanitarian aid, but I'm still baffled at why bother with having North Korea as the antagonist rather than just having Apex itself be the villain? Perhaps it's because Dambusters (formerly Crytek UK oddly enough) think that there's worth in making North Korea a "superpower" invader? But if that's so then that's retarded, given that North Korea has no chance of invading the US in any shape or form; hell the best it could do is invade South Korea and maybe parts of China and Japan. Maybe that would make a more interesting scenario but no the Western market apparently demands the US to be "invaded" by North Korea no matter what. That and there's so much wrong with having North Korea still be a relevant world power that just lost the Korean War; hell the idea of having the Soviet Union lasting into the 21st century is more realistic.
Now it's no secret that the invading force was going to be China (and perhaps rightly so given that China has a lot of resources and manpower) but of course after some guy told them that China might ban the existence of Kaos Studios (the guys behind the original Homefront) if they proceeded with this idea, so they chickened out and made the antagonists North Koreans; same with the s--tty Red Dawn remake. And thus a potentially awesome franchise has been crippled by cowardice, talk about shameful display. The recent retcon of the franchise's setting still continues this nonsense as you have seen before and perhaps the biggest reason why I don't care for it anymore and honestly wished it should have stayed dead alongside THQ's rotted corpse (and yeah I'm aware by now that Crytek isn't publishing the game perhaps for a good reason).
My antipathy for Revolution is exemplified when I some footage of the Homefront Revolution game through an Angry Joe streaming video on youtube and I just can't help but still feel antipathetic even though I'm not supposed to given how stupid the backstory is. It reminds me that the developers are trying to take the game really seriously when they shouldn't be in the first place. Even though I'm sure the gameplay might be better this time around given that it's supposed to simulate realistic guerrilla warfare but the setting is what kills it; I could care less about the graphics which look like it was made 3 to 4 years ago IMO. I'm sorry but with the fact that the series keeps compromising the believability of its backstory, I refuse to take this game seriously and play it; yep I'm refusing to play it because well why give them the money if you really don't want the medium they're making. That kind of hypocrisy is perhaps the reason why this s--t franchise is getting another game even though it probably shouldn't by now.
Oh well, if Dambusters wants to continue that franchise then maybe they should reboot Homefront into a more ridiculous, light and soft franchise ala Metal Slug if they're going to keep compromising the setting because well why bother, or better yet just make a new Timesplitters game (seriously, they were Free Radical at one point, talk about a shameful display; that and Haze).
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